


Game Over

by The_Fourth_Catalyst



Category: Bayonetta (Video Games), Fortnite (Video Game), Overwatch (Video Game), Street Fighter, Tomb Raider & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Tracer is bisexual, Wreck-It Ralph meets Ready Player One, semi-poly relationship, set in a video game universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fourth_Catalyst/pseuds/The_Fourth_Catalyst
Summary: There is a secret universe beyond game consoles and computer screens where video game characters all meet and co-exist with one another. We meet Earl Sweeney, the protagonist of a survival horror indie game who regularly visits the Index, a huge futuristic metropolis where video game characters come to hang out.





	Game Over

**Earl P.O.V.**

Who am I, you ask? Earl Sweeney is the name to be exact. I’m a character of a video game. Not just any game. A first-person, supernatural, survival horror indie game called _The Unforgettable_ . Don’t know why, but it kind of clicks in a way. My game was created by Ubisoft, the same people behind the _Assassin’s Creed_ franchise, and it came out in 2012 on Xbox One, Playstation and was launched two years later on Steam in 2014. There were many brave enough to play the game with headphones and have the volume up. Professional gamers on YouTube filming themselves playing the game as such to showcase their fans their reactions. Now I don’t mean to give out any potential spoilers to anyone who hasn’t played the game, but mainly, as you would expect in a horror game, it’s full of a lot of jumpscares. I mean, a lot of them. They just come out out of nowhere.

So according to the storyline of the game, I’m a former police detective who was fired for capturing the wrong culprit, while the real one got away and the authorities were unable to catch him. I live on, jobless and alone, in a trashy trailer park, drinking my sorrows away. Then one night (or should I say, at the beginning of the game), I receive a phone call from my old boss, the chief, to investigate five locations where a series of unexplained incidents have occured and he would pay me in return. The first objective is at the Hutchins farmland surrounded by a cornfield where I discover the Hutchins family are a bunch of homicidal maniacs in cahoots with the monsters in their cornfield. An evil, possessed scarecrow and a demon with a jack-o’-lantern head. The second objective is at the movie theater where it is haunted by technopathic ghosts who possess the technology of the building, including the cinema screens and can assume the form of movie characters. The third objective is at the psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane where I get ambushed by a bunch of deranged inmates, including one who is even more deranged the rest. The fourth objective is an abandoned amusement park that’s been shut down five years before the events of the game where I find the carnival workers are actually an onslaught of hideous, otherworldly monsters in disguise. And finally, the fifth and last objective is at the local cemetery where I discover a Satanic cult planning to awaken their lord, the Devil himself, into the flesh-and-blood world.

Like I said before, the game is first-person. Everything I see, the player sees. My face is never shown, expect when I look in a mirror. From there, I’m an average-looking guy with a light grey T-shirt, a horseshoe mustache and evidence of a beard growing in here and there on my face. Not exactly pretty to look at if you ask me. Just a little warning, because there are no checkpoints or save stations in the game, you cannot save your progress. If you die, you cannot respawn from where you were. You have to go all the way back to the start of the objective and start again from there. It’s really annoying, I know. But I hear the developers are considering updating the game so that there will be checkpoints. I don’t know for sure.

This abnormally-large and beautiful city that I’m walking through is what we call the Index. It’s a huge metropolis and something of a utopia for video game characters like myself to hang out when we’re not in our respective universes. There’s many things one can do here. Spend time in other video game universes like Super Mario Bros, Kingdom Hearts, Minecraft. That last place is real boring. Everything pixelated as far as the eye could see. We can drink, get our groove on at nightclubs, eat and never get fat, full or sick, drink and never get drunk, go on a spree at the shopping mall (yes, we have a shopping mall), all sorts of stuff. As I was walking through the city plaza, my vision went dark suddenly when I felt a pair of hands covering my eyes.

“Guess who?” Came a cheery, high-pitched British accented voice belonging to someone I was all too familiar with.

“I really hate doing this.” I grunted as I was not in the mood for this nonsense.

“Come on, guess!” insisted the female behind me.

I breathed a heavy, annoyed sigh. That girl was persistent. No doubt about it.

“Is it possibly Tracer by any chance?” I asked, playing along.

“Correct!” She chirped, finally removing her hands from my eyes and giggling that cute, infectious laugh of hers. He turned to face to well-known Lena Oxton a.k.a. Tracer from the popular multiplayer, first-person, shooter game, _Overwatch_ , that practically a lot of people are playing nowadays. That sly little devil is always zipping from one place to another with the little ability of hers. No, she is not my girlfriend. Though, in spite of myself, my eyes tend to drift downward toward her - ahem - thick hips and her, well,......buttocks. I’ll have to admit, she is a hot piece of ass. Don’t tell her I said that.

“Hiya, love. I’ve been looking for you.” She mentioned with her hands on her hips.

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah! Me and the girls are having a small pizza party later. I was wondering if you’d like to come.”

“I’ve been roped in this before. I may drop by.” I could only say before Tracer suddenly attacked me with a bear hug. She so hyper-active sometimes.

“Splendid! We’re eating at Luigi’s pizzeria at the mall.” Tracer told me with the generous smile of her.

“Since when does Luigi make pizzas?” I asked with smidgen of bewilderment in a sort of “are you kidding me?”-type way. We all know that Mario and Luigi are Italian-based characters. But the thought of them making pizzas sounds kind of stereotypical to me.

“Last year. Anyway, see you there, Earl!” She said before blinking away from my view. That trick just never gets old. I’m a little uncomfortable to explain this to you guys despite how far-fetched it sounds, but rumor has it that she is a lesbian, given that she has a girlfriend named Emily in the graphic novel or whatever based on the game. Who cares? I have untrustworthy logic anyway. Sometimes. Later on, I arrived at the pizzeria where Tracer was seated at a table with a bunch of her female friends from outside of her game. Some you’re probably familiar with. Lara Croft from _Tomb Raider_ , Chun-Li and Cammy from _Street Fighter_ and that thick, blonde female constructor from _Fortnite_ named Penny. They already had a two boxes of pizza at the table.

“Glad you could make it, love.” Tracer glimmered at me while I sat down.

“Yeah, me too.” I murmured.

Pardon my dry sense of humor. I’m not exactly the social type. At least, not by choice. The developers designed me with a tragic past that left me cynical, sarcastic, not a fan of company, standoffish. It’s just the way I was designed. I try to keep my responses short in effort to avoid long, boring conversations. Me and the girls feasted upon the slices of pizza while shooting a breeze together. Well, yeah. They were, but I just tried to keep inside my personal dome of silence. I did notice some of the girls were shooting me teasing, flirty smirks, but I only smiled briefly at them and that was all.

“Hey, guys. I have something important to tell you all.” Penny suddenly said, abruptly cutting off the discussion, bringing all eyes on her, except mine.

“What’s that?” asked Chun-Li.

Penny said nothing and seemed to sit completely still like a statue in her seat for a few seconds before she then broke the silence that befell upon the table with a loud, 10-second lasting fart. After that, the girls all howled with laughter. God, that’s just too much, I think secretly to myself while laying my head on the table. I tried to ignore the stench that was now assaulting my nasal cavities. But lord, did it stink.

“Too much pepperoni and cheese.” joked Penny, fanning the stink away from her face.

“Hold on. Shh.” Lara said holding up her finger, silencing everyone before she slightly leaned forward in her seat to rudely rip a much longer and much more repulsive blast of pizza-fueled flatulence and the girls shared a good laugh together. You just had to start that, didn’t you, Penny?

“I knew you had it in you, Lara!” Tracer cheered the adventurer girl on.

Ubisoft, why have you forsaken me? This little fart contest went on for another minute and Tracer ripped a few foul air biscuits of her own. It took every fiber in my being to not gag from the ungodly odor or yell at them to knock it off. I just didn’t want to come across as rude like they were at this point. I decided it was time for me to leave so I told Tracer there was appointment I needed to go to. But in reality, I just wanted to get away from all the immature flatulence. I couldn’t take it anymore. Tracer can be such a child at times. I entered the train station and stood there waiting for a train to arrive. Then I felt a presence standing next to me.

Looking to my right, there stood Bayonetta, the fashionable witch from the game named after her. Oh, she was just gingerly sucking on a sucker like she did in her games. She seemed to feel my eyes on her before turning her head to face me. She merely smiled and winked at me. Again, like before, I just brushed it off and focused on waiting for the train. And finally, it did just on time. Before I could hop on, Bayonetta just brushed herself in front of me and hopped aboard before I could. That woman is a nuisance. But not as much of a nuisance as Tracer. There were no other seats to sit in, so I sat next to Bayonetta reluctantly and prayed that this would be over soon.

“You’re from that horror game, aren’t you?” She asked me in that posh British accent that seemed to fit perfectly with her badass fighting skills and striper/fashion model-style poses.

“Unless you know anyone else from a horror game.” That was my only answer and she didn’t say anything after that. I sort of feel bad for not providing people with enough replies to help them start a chat with me, but also a little glad. Social interactions were something I wasn’t good at. The train reached my destination and I was off it in no time. That’s when something on the screen caught my attention. Oh, great. It was one of those walkthrough videos made by a YouTube gamer.

“Hello, everybody. My name is Markiplier and welcome to _The Unforgettable_. This is, of course, a horror game. Probably the scariest and I’ve played like a thousand of horror games in the past as you’ve seen in my past videos. So basically I’ve been asked to play this game just for the heck of it. It does look pretty promising to say the least.”

I could only shake my head in aggravation as I watched this Markiplier person play my game while delivering such lackluster and pretty much offensive commentary on it. Soon other characters formed a crowd around me to watch as well.

“And here is the bathroom. Hey, is somebody in here taking a shit? Nobody taking a shit today? Ah. That’s a lot to expect in a place like this. Oh, what’s this in the mirror? Is that me?” said Markiplier as he was now moving me into the restroom of the movie theater level of the game before looking at the mirror to reveal my reflection. “Oh, my god! I’m Hulk Hogan’s less attractive twin brother!”

That brought a round of laughter from the crowd around me and I just frowned, feeling my temper right to a maximum from this annoying YouTuber’s rude comments about my looks. So I’m not the best-looking character around. So what? Fuck all of you for thinking just thoughts. I dare you to call me ugly and get away with it. Fascist assholes.

* * *

**Third Person P.O.V.**

Earl focused on getting back to his own game. So he concentrated hard until he disappeared in a bright light as if he were an alien being teleported into space. He breathed a relaxed sigh when he found himself back inside the dark and creepy world of his game of _The Unforgettable_. Back into the scary atmosphere of the first-person horror game that he was designed for, Earl maneuvered through the leaf-covered street and overheard a commotion going on in the local tavern nearby. Inside, a few of the games villains were having little drink shindig, doing Lord knows what. The Possessed Scarecrow (or “Zeb”) and the Pumpkinhead were playing a game of throwing knifes at a picture of Saddam Hussein and cackling madly when their blades hit the outer rim of the target. Pumpkinhead waddled over to grab his knife out when Zeb took his turn too early and aimed the knife right smack dab on the nose of Hussein, scaring the unholy wits out of Pumpkinhead, making the demon jump back with a startled yelp. Everyone in the bar shared a round of mocking laughter at his reaction before Pumpkinhead hissed his unearthly snarl before storming up to the living scarecrow’s face.

“Hey! Watch it, fuckface!” He jabbed, pushing him roughly.

“Oh, believe me. I’m watching it! I’m watching it!” Zeb screamed back as the two engaged into an angry staring contest while the patrons crowding them were chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to see a good roughhousing out of the two arguing abnormalities. Outside the establishment, Earl shook his head and disregarding the horseplay and headed on down to where he lived inside the game. The old trailer park and marching inside of the trailer that he owned. It was a mess inside, but then again, he hasn’t been the most tidy person yet as he was a lonely drunkard and not very active much. Yep, this was his life.


End file.
